One of the things I have done in my preaching is more through the years — a tip I picked up from my good friend Rick Warren — I try to make my messages, my points more practical, more action-verb oriented. I do believe that people can do biblical exposition — true biblical verse-by-verse exposition — on Sunday morning to a younger generation and I think it will stick, and I think it can be relevant. You can make it work; you just have to work hard at it.

I'll give you an illustration. I'm in a series of messages right now I've entitled "Shockingly Refreshing." I picked up the idea when we all come back from Labor Day we're all psychologically a bit down. There is something inside of us that says, "OK, no more vacation until Thanksgiving, summer's behind us, got to get to work." It can be a little bit of a let down because we just came out of a situation where we have Memorial Day, you go right into the Fourth of July, you've got a week or two vacation. You kind of get used to that, then all the sudden — BOOM — you've got September, October, November and there's no day light at the end of the tunnel. So I came out of that with the idea that I would do a series on how do you handle overload? How do you overcome overload? How do you overcome stress? And how can you face weeks of all work and no play?

So out of that I developed a four part series of messages that I've been preaching. This Sunday the title of my message is "The Ultimate Refresher" — I'm preaching on the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. So it's a doctrinal sermon. Here's what I'm saying: if God indeed is sovereign, if God is in absolute control of our lives and if nothing happens apart from the fact that either God calls it to happen or God allows it to happen — and either way knowing that He will work it all out together for my good — then concerning yesterday I can turn bitterness into blessing. No matter what people did to me yesterday, no matter how unjustly I was treated, God obviously used it and God allowed it for my good. Case in point — Joseph.

Another practical application I can make from the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is not only concerning yesterday — can I turn bitterness into blessing — but concerning today, I can turn worry into worship. Cast all your cares upon Him because He cares for you. Well God is sovereign, God is in control. And I automatically know something: no matter what happens to me today nothing will happen to me that God and I can't handle together. So I can replace worry with worship. Then concerning tomorrow I can replace fear with faith. Because no matter what happens tomorrow I already know God's in control.

We're being told that we can't preach doctrine I don't believe that. I think that we need to preach more doctrine. But I've taken doctrine and I've created a message that will be practically applicable to any generation but especially to a younger generation that is probably facing as much overload as any generation in history.